Create and set up Moodle courses

V1.2 EN 05-2022 | Michael Heinecke, Marcus Soll, Christian Kreitschmann, Özgü Gürsoy | DL.MIN | Universität Hamburg

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Create and set up Moodle courses

This tutorial shows you how to create, set up and configure a course room in MIN Moodle.

Moodle course cover image

V1.2 EN 05-2022 | Michael Heinecke, Marcus Soll, Christian Kreitschmann, Özgü Gürsoy | DL.MIN | Universität Hamburg

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.
Creative Commons Lizenzvertrag

Table of contents & navigation

Below you will find an overview of the chapters of this tutorial. Clicking on the individual tiles will take you directly to the corresponding chapter. Clicking the arrow in the upper right corner will take you to the next section. For explanation of further navigation and menu bar elements, click on the help icon in the upper right corner.

The videos located at the top of the page contain all the information associated with the corresponding section. You can either watch the videos or review the slideshow below them. At the bottom of the page you will often find useful tips.

Create and set up Moodle courses

In addition to the provision of lecture recordings, the use of a learning platform is recommended to provide further learning resources as well as course sections for communication, collaboration and the organization of teaching / learning activities. In concrete terms, a learning platform such as Moodle can help you to

  • enable an exchange with students (synchronous or asynchronous),
  • provide up-to-date information and further learning materials, scripts, videos or exercises,
  • enable the exchange and cooperation of students among each other,
  • coordinate groupings and group activities,
  • support the repetition and deepening of the learning material (e.g. in the context of online-assessments accompanying your lectures),
  • offer a final examination of the learning material

and to organize these activities and materials in one virtual place.

In this tutorial you will learn how to

  • login to MIN-Moodle,
  • create a course room,
  • add participants via self-enrolment / manual enrolment
  • and how to set up and configure your course room.

Log in

Fig.0: Startpage of MIN Moodle

You can find MIN-Moodle at

You can login to MIN-Moodle with your central user ID (B-Kennung). After registration and confirmation of the terms of use and privacy policy, the MIN-Moodle account will be linked to your B-Kennung.

Permissions

In order to create your own courses, an administrator must assign your account the permission to create courses (role: course creator). To do this, send an informal email to dl.min@uni-hamburg.de. The following link will provide you with a pre-formulated email, in which you only need to customize the desired course categories in which you want to create your courses in the future. You will receive a message once you have been approved for course creation.

Create a new course

If the rights of the role Course creator are assigned to your account, you can create a new course room in the course category of your department in the corresponding semester (e.g. SoSe 2022). To do this, proceed as follows:

  • Fig.1: Create course in MIN Moodle

    Scroll to the bottom of the list of existing courses. Below the list, click the Add a new course button.

  • Fig.2: Create course form in MIN Moodle

    A form opens where you enter the following data: Name of the course, short name of the course and if necessary a picture.

  • Fig.3: Course format of the course in MIN Moodle

    You can change the course format to Topics format or (for more complex courses) Tiles format. By default, a weekly format is preset.

  • Fig.4: Save new course in MIN Moodle

    Scroll to the bottom of the form and click the Save and display button.

If you want to add a description to the course, it is a good idea to keep it very short. The entire description is displayed on the home page and long descriptions are confusing there.

.

Add participants: Self enrolment with access password

To allow your students to enter the course as participants, you should enable self-enrolment with a password. To do this, proceed as follows:

  • Fig.5: Menu path to enable self-enrolment in MIN Moodle (part 1/2)
  • Fig.6: Menu path to enable self-enrolment in MIN Moodle (part 2/2)

    Open the Users tab and click on the Enrolment methods link.

  • Fig.7: List of enrolment methods already created

    Now you can see a list of enrolment methods that are created for your course. Self-enrolment is already there, but not yet activated (the eye icon is crossed out). In the self-enrolment row, click the gear icon ⚙️ on the far right.

  • Fig.8: Create password for self-enrolment

    Enter a self-enrolment password for students at Enrolment key.

  • Fig.9: Save Changes

    Then scroll to the bottom of the form and click Save changes.

  • Fig.10: Enabled self-enrolment with eye icon not crossed out

    Now that you have created the Enrolement key, you can click on the eye icon in the list of enrolment methods to activate self-enrolment (the method is activated when the eye icon is not crossed out).

To make self-enrolment in your course as easy as possible for the individual students, you should send them the password as well as the URL to the course room (e.g. via STiNE, via web meeting or in presence). You can copy the link to your course from the address bar of the browser as soon as you are on the entry page of the corresponding course. You can also get the URL from the course link in the breadcrumbs under the course name (Dashboard / My courses / Name-of-course -> right-click and "Copy Link").

Fig.11: URL of the MIN Moodle course in the address bar

Adding students via manual enrolment is not recommended. Students who have never logged into Moodle may not be displayed. Self-enrolment, on the other hand, requires a login that has already occurred.

Add other teachers and tutors manually

You can add additional teachers and tutors or correction assistants to your course via the "Participants" list. It is necessary that they have already been logged into MIN-Moodle in order to be found by the system as users and to be added to courses. To do this, proceed as follows:

  • Fig.12: Menu path to add additional teachers, tutors or correction assistants in MIN Moodle (part 1/3)

    On your courses' overview page click on the gear icon ⚙️ in the top right corner above the course content. In the menu, click More...

    .
  • Fig.13: Menu path to add more teachers, tutors or correction assistants in MIN Moodle (part 2/3)

    Open the Users tab and click on Enroled users.

  • Fig.14: Menu path to add additional teachers, tutors or correction assistants in MIN Moodle (part 3/3)

    Click the Enrol users button in the upper right corner.

  • Fig.15: Enroling users in a MIN Moodle course with concurrent role assignment

    In the following dialog window you can search for users (existing in the system), select them, assign them a course role and then enrol them in the course. The Teacher role is the correct role for additional instructors. The role Non-editing teacher is useful for tutors, correction assistants, etc.

If you want to assign an additional role to a person who is already enroled in the course, you can do this directly in the list of participants by clicking on the pencil icon. Do not forget to click on Save!

Fig.16: Role assignment for a person already enroled in the course in MIN Moodle

Add yourself as teacher as well. Then you will also see your own course on your dashboard.

Add content to the course

In this section you will learn how to fill your Moodle course with different content. Moodle offers different activities and learning materials for this purpose. Only the steps for the basic setup of a Moodle room are explained. For details, please refer to more advanced tutorials.

Basic knowledge: Add content

To add or create learning content (resources / activities), proceed as follows:

  • Fig.17: Edit course in MIN-Moodle

    Click the Turn editing on button in the top right corner of your courses' overview page.

  • Fig.18: Add new content to a MIN-Moodle course

    To add new content, scroll to the bottom of the existing list of topics and click Add topics at the bottom right of the list.

  • Fig.19: Rename existing content in MIN-Moodle

    To rename a piece of content, click the pencil icon to the right of the topic, enter the new name, and then press the Enter key on your keyboard to save the change.

  • Fig.20: Creating an activity or material in MIN-Moodle

    Now click the Add an activity or resource button next to the section you want to add content to.

  • Fig.21: Selection of possible activities and materials in MIN-Moodle

    An overview of all the activities / resources that you can include in your course in MIN-Moodle opens.

  • Fig.22: Selection of possible activities in MIN-Moodle

    Here you can add activities, such as BigBlueButton (web meetings), Chat or Forum.

  • Fig.23: Selection of possible materials in MIN-Moodle.

    Here you can add working materials, such as Files or Pages.

The simplest activities / resources are File or Page:

  • Use File to upload PDF files, for example.
  • Use Page to create HTML pages with Moodle's editor, for example to embed Lecture2Go videos (more on this in the following section).

The following modules are offered for communication with students:

  • Chat for a synchronous communication, where sender and receiver have to be online at the same time.
  • Forum for an asynchronous communication, where time-delayed answers can also be given
  • BigBlueButton as a web conferencing tool, where you as a teacher can communicate simultaneously via video chat and show a presentation or a whiteboard
  • Assignment for handing in homework or similar (more about this in the following section)

Hide / show or delete content

If you create and edit content, but do not want it to be displayed directly, you can hide this content. You can hide an entire topic block or individual sections within a topic block. To do this, click the Edit button next to the relevant entry, and then click Hide topic. Students will then no longer be able to see the content in question. To make it visible again, click on Edit and then on Show topic.

If you want to delete unnecessary content, click the Edit button at the right end of the relevant entry, and then click Delete oder Delete topic.

Fig.24: Hide or delete a module in MIN Moodle

Embed a Lecture2Go video

To embed a video in MIN-Moodle, you first need a Lecture2Go embed code. There are two embed code types:

  • IFrame embed code. iFrame embedding inserts the player from the Lecture2Go page into another page (in MIN-Moodle). This also works for protected videos or videos with an access code. The video is delivered as a stream from the media server.
  • HTML5 video tag. HTML5-embedding uses the browser's player. The video is delivered as kind of a 'stream' from the Lecture2Go file server, so the Download option in the video list on Lecture2Go must be activated for this.

Embed codes from public videos on Lecture2Go

For public videos, copying an embed code is quite simple:

  • Fig.25: Lecture2Go iframe code

    - To do this, open the Lecture2Go page of the video.
    - Below the video you will find a Share button and there the IFrame code section and (if the download option is turned on) the HTLM5 Code.
    - Please mark one of the codes by double-clicking on it and then right-click and copy it.

  • Fig.26: Moodle HTML Editor

    - Now you can create a Page (Resource) in Moodle.
    - In the Page content field, you now need to open the source code view of the HTML editor. Go to the advanced menu (1) and then to the source code view (2).
    - Now paste the copied code from the clipboard and click the source code view button again (2).
    If this was successful, you can now see the video in the text page.
    Finally, click Save and display at the bottom.

Embed codes from non-public videos on Lecture2Go

The integration of a non-public video is basically the same as for the public video, but the IFrame code cannot be taken directly from the video page. Instead, it is located in the editing page of the video.

  • Fig.27: L2GO Edit mode

    First go to the My L2Go page and select the pencil icon next to the your video to open the editing page.

  • Fig.28: IFrame code in edit mode

    Under Share you will find the IFrame code. Please select the code located in the box and save it to the clipboard.

  • Fig.29: Moodle HTML Editor

    Now you can create a Page (Resource) in MIN-Moodle and paste the embed code from the clipboard there as described above.

The IFrame code is not yet included in the first upload. Upload the video first, and then go into edit mode again

Create an assignment

To enable students to hand in solutions to given tasks (e.g. homework) or similar in MIN-Moodle, the module Assignment is required. This can be added to a topic (section) of your course, as described in the section Basic knowledge: Adding content, via the button Add an activity or resource.

Below you will find a list of the necessary data, which will be requested after clicking on the Assignment module:

  1. General.
    • Assignment Name: Title of the Assignment
    • Description: The Assignment text can be inserted here. Alternatively, a PDF with the Assignment can be uploaded via Additional files.
  2. Availability.
    • Allow submissions from: From this date onwards, tasks can be submitted. If you want the task to always be open, you can uncheck Activate.
    • Due Date: Students should submit the Assignment by this date. Submissions after this date will still be accepted, but marked as late.
    • Cut-off date: If enabled (check Enable), then students will not be able to submit a solution after this date.
    • Remind me to grade by: Here you can specify if and when you want to be reminded to grade submissions.
    • Always show description: If checked, then students can also see the Assignment description before the Allow submissions from date.
  3. Submission types.
    • Here you can decide which type of content is allowed for uploading submissions. It is recommended to allow at least File submissions here. Via Save and display the task will be created.

Rate a task

Please follow the usual security advice when opening files. In particular, do not open executable files, and do not allow scripts in word files.

To grade submissions, go to the assignment and click the Grade button. You will now be taken to the grading editor, where you can enter the grade as well as comments. An overview of the different controls can be found in the following figure:

Fig.30: Grading editor controls

A submission may include several pages. Be sure to evaluate all pages.

The button View all submissions gives you an overview of all submissions as well as the corresponding gradings.